This post continues the discussion about how behavioral psychology might affect the outcome of a meeting at which a startup team is pitching to a potential investor. You can get caught up by reading part I and part II. My goal is to offer some advice on how entrepreneurs pitching to early stage investors might prepare to […]
Long Read
How an Investor’s Behavioral Traits Might Completely Derail Your Pitch – Part I
Many startup pitch meetings start out on a promising note, but things fall apart during the conversation between the startup and its prospective investor. Sometimes this could have been prevented if the startup team had studied a little bit of behavioral psychology beforehand. ((Any errors in correctly attributing work to my sources and references is […]
In Early Stage Investing, Should Investors Bet on the Jockey or the Horse?
The horse is too small, the jockey too big, the trainer too old, and I’m too dumb to know the difference. – Charles Howard, owner of Seabiscuit addressing comments about his horse, Seabiscuit and the team of people he had assembled to train and race Seabiscuit. Red Pollard was Seabiscuit’s jockey and Tom Smith was […]
Ceteris Paribus: When A Startup’s History Really Matters
Once in a while I meet a startup that makes me scratch my head in bewilderment. At first glance everything looks fine, but I can’t help but wonder if I might be missing something. In such instances I think to myself; Is there some important detail that is not so obvious, and that is concealed […]
A Reexamination: Can Venture Capitalists be Value Investors?
Let’s begin with some disclaimers. I have never actually been a value investor. I have also never made individual picks of stocks traded on the public markets. I was completely oblivious of stock markets until soon after I had graduated college in 2001. Before I arrived in the United States in 1997, I would not […]
What If Q&A: What Should I Do To Spread My Idea?
Rajoshi Gosh in Chennai, India sent me this question via email; I am a startup founder in the developing world. ((She is the co-founder of 34Cross. Their first product, Owlink, is a browser extension that is now available for Chrome. Rajoshi tells me versions for Firefox and Safari are in the pipeline. We have known one another […]